how to power your adsmart campaigns  

By now, you may have heard of AdSmart from Sky. This platform is disrupting the advertising world, getting brands on TV and in front of their audience for a lot less than you might think.  

Between valuable measurability, a lower cost of entry than linear TV advertising and impressive audience targeting, could AdSmart be suited to your business?  

key takeaways 

• what is sky adsmart? 

• 6 reasons sky adsmart could work for your business 

• how you can use adsmart to improve your marketing efforts and grow your sales 

firstly, what is sky adsmart?  

AdSmart is Sky’s digital ad product that gives you the chance to target specific audiences during TV ad breaks. Combining the power of TV with the in-depth data of Sky households, you can appeal to a targeted audience through a mass medium and across a range of popular channels.   

We’ve been working with AdSmart for some time now but have really begun to see the success of the platform grow. Tom Walkden, Head of Paid Media, commented: “Popularity wise, AdSmart has certainly grown. We recommend it to many of our clients as it has worked extremely well for a range of businesses and industries.”  

how does it work? 

Sky sends ads over satellite to the Sky Q box. Based on the information customers have provided, relevant ads are displayed during live TV ad breaks.  

Choosing which households will be targeted by your ads is based on a range of factors including age, location, lifestyle and even pet ownership. Putting you in control, target markets can be selected allowing your advert to be played to your chosen audience in the comfort of their own home.  

what will your audience see? 

AdSmart ads will appear during the usual break without any extra signage or branding from the platform supplier. As viewers expect adverts between programmes, this is a minimally intrusive form of advertising with a big impact.  

6 reasons why adsmart could work for your business 

1) lower cost to entry  

Linear TV advertising is one of the highest costing forms of advertising out there. A lot of money can quickly be spent on a number of things:  

• booking the advertising slot for a TV campaign at a national scale 

• creating the advert 

• paying for the ad to appear for the duration of the campaign  

When we discussed our AdSmart services with Tom, he marked cost as one of the top reasons that makes this form of advertising so effective:  

“The cost to entry is a lot lower with AdSmart than normal TV advertising but you’re still getting the same benefits. An AdSmart campaign could be put in place from as little as five thousand pounds per month. Of course, creating the asset still incurs a cost, but it doesn't need to be all singing and dancing adverts that we often see on TV.” - Tom Walkden, Head of Paid Media, equation 

2) more cost-effective ongoing 

For the duration of your campaign, you don’t have to pay for your ad being aired unless it’s viewed full screen on a main TV set for at least 75 percent of its duration.  

This can make a real difference to your ongoing costs and is where AdSmart’s advertising services differ to other digital ad platforms.  

3) get creative  

There is flexibility to be as creative as you want to be with your AdSmart campaign, provided the quality is there. Not only can you be on TV at a much more cost-effective price, but you can also create the asset to support the campaign for less than you may have thought too. In fact, we’ve found that the more minimal approach usually creates the best results. Plus, the money and time that went into creating this asset can also be used across other advertising channels or in different formats to get even more for your budget.   

As an agency, we have the capabilities internally to produce assets or partner with external organisations to create what you need.  

4) build trust and authority  

In research from Toast TV, they asked which advertising channels are seen as the most trusted with TV advertising coming in above the rest at 42 percent.  

One of the main advantages of TV advertising is that it builds trust. Seen as an authoritative channel, TV advertising creates a level of legitimacy and trust which viewers then associate with the brand on the big screen. After all, there’s a reason why some of the biggest brands choose to advertise on TV alongside digital platforms.  

Consumer trust in your business is essential to long-term success. If your audience don’t have confidence in you and the products or services you offer, you’ll struggle to make sales.  

5) handpick your audience  

Merging the sophisticated targeting capabilities of digital platforms with the unrivalled power of TV, a specific audience can be handpicked for your AdSmart campaign.  

AdSmart’s audience targeting capabilities are vast, allowing us to target based on regular demographics as well as third-party data, affluence levels and postcode areas. Going one step further, we can even show relevant ads to people in different towns based on which audience profile they match.   

For example, a brand that has paid for a slot could serve two different ads to two different audiences. If a viewer doesn’t fit the AdSmart profile, they’ll be served with a non-AdSmart ad during the break.  

6) measurability  

Other than the high cost to get on TV through linear TV advertising, measurability is also something this traditional format lacks. The success of traditional TV advertising can be hard to measure making it difficult to show exactly what your efforts have returned. However, this is where AdSmart really stands apart allowing us to collate and analyse data as we would on a search or display campaign.  

With AdSmart, we can show: 

• the number of impressions that we've served to households 

• the frequency that a specific household has seen your ad  

• how traffic to your business has increased from a particular geographical area 

• the level that conversion rates have increased including a one-to-one match up of people who have engaged with your business versus the addresses where the ad was showed  

• the amount of additional revenue this has created  

Collating this insight during post-campaign analysis means you know exactly what the return is from your investment. This valuable insight can also be applied to other strategies and campaigns going forward.  

adsmart in action  

Powering your AdSmart campaigns with high-quality data can increase your conversions through some of the nation’s most popular TV channels.  

We’ve worked alongside many businesses to grow their sales through AdSmart including: 

Grand Central  

Taking an audience-first approach, we focused on targeting northern postcode areas and surrounding stations served by Grand Central that are on the main route from Sunderland to London Kings Cross. A broad spectrum of households was targeted with a particular interest in leisure travel.  

Grand Central partnered with us and a separate video production company to produce an emotive video that would capture the attention of their targeted viewers.  

Spirit of Harrogate  

Based in the North Yorkshire town of Harrogate, we targeted postcode areas across North Yorkshire, Manchester and London. A layer of affluence targeting was also added to focus on mid-high to very-high income households that reflected Spirit of Harrogate’s desired target audience.  

get your brand on tv  

AdSmart from Sky marks immense development in the TV world. Allowing brands to place a specific audience at the heart of their TV advertising, this tactic matches the impressive targeting and measurability of social media. Refine audiences, optimise your brand reach and ensure your content reaches the people that matter most to your business with AdSmart. 

To find out more about this service, how it could fit into your marketing strategy and the results we have achieved for others, don’t hesitate to get in touch with our team.